“Let us beware of irony when making judgements. Of all the dispositions of the mind, irony is the least intelligent.”

—  Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

Gardons-nous de l'ironie en jugeant. De toutes les dispositions de l'esprit, l'ironie est la moins intelligente.
Notebook entry, February 24, 1848, cited from Les cahiers de Sainte-Beuve (Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1876) p. 75; Christopher Prendergast The Classic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) p. 244.

Original

Gardons-nous de l'ironie en jugeant. De toutes les dispositions de l'esprit, l'ironie est la moins intelligente.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Let us beware of irony when making judgements. Of all the dispositions of the mind, irony is the least intelligent." by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve?
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve photo
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve 10
French literary critic 1804–1869

Related quotes

Rainer Maria Rilke photo

“Irony: Do not let yourself be governed by it, especially not in unproductive moments. In productive ones try to make use of it as one more means of seizing life.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Two (5 April 1903)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

W. Somerset Maugham photo

“Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 297

Kevin Kelly photo

“The great irony of god games is that letting go is the only way to win.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995)

Henry James photo

“Don't undervalue irony; it is often of great use.”

Henry James book Washington Square

Source: Washington Square (1881), Ch. XXVII.

Harold Bloom photo

“Hamlet, Kiekegaard, Kafka are ironists in the wake of Jesus. All Western irony is a repetition of Jesus' enigmas/riddles, in amalgam with the ironies of Socrates.”

Harold Bloom (1930–2019) American literary critic and scholar

Jesus and Yahweh: the names divine (2005), p 10.

David Foster Wallace photo

“And make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All U. S. irony is based on an implicit "I don’t really mean what I’m saying." So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it’s impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it’s too bad it’s impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today’s irony ends up saying: "How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean."”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction
Essays

F. Scott Fitzgerald photo

“Finally, let us take care that the book possesses all the virtues of style, so that it may last forever as a witness to our profound scepticism and our universal irony.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Quoted, The Beautiful and Damned (1922)

Thomas Mann photo

“Irony, forsooth! Guard yourself, Engineer, from the sort of irony that thrives up here”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 5
Context: Irony, forsooth! Guard yourself, Engineer, from the sort of irony that thrives up here; guard yourself altogether from taking on their mental attitude! Where irony is not a direct and classic device of oratory, not for a moment equivocal to a healthy mind, it makes for depravity, it becomes a drawback to civilization, an unclean traffic with the forces of reaction, vice and materialism.

Derren Brown photo

“There is a real irony to the NLPers I knew who prided themselves on their communication skills yet because of their need to let everyone know how engaging they were, they were among the least engaging”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Tricks of the Mind (2006)

Related topics